Residential workshop for Caribbean creative writers

Ten writers who have not as yet published a novel or collection of short stories, poems or plays will be chosen from across the Caribbean to join this year’s residential workshops.

The 2012 Workshop will focus on fiction, playwriting and poetry and will be facilitated by professor Funso Aiyejina and Dr Merle Hodge at a secluded writing-inducing setting in Trinidad.

Support for Caribbean writing is an ongoing programme of The Cropper Foundation that seeks to contribute to the development of the Caribbean on many levels and in different areas of interest. The writers’ workshop is part of the Foundation’s effort to encourage new Caribbean literary voices by providing practical advice on the craft of writing.

Over 80 writers from Antigua, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, British Virgin Islands, Commonwealth of Dominica, Guyana, Jamaica, Montserrat, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Caribbean Diaspora (Canada, USA, France, and UK) have competed to take part in these workshops held so far in Grand Riviere, Balanadra , Gasparee Island and in Tobago. From the participants of this workshop series, Barbara Jenkins (Trinidad and Tobago), Lelawattee Manoo-Rahming (Bahamas) and Lenworth Burke (Jamaica) went on to win the Commonwealth Short Story Competition and the Jamaica Observer’s Annual Fiction Award respectively; Ruel Johnson (Guyana) has won the Guyana Literature Prize 2003, Krishna Ramsumair (TT) has published a number of short stories in local and international journals; Robert Clarke (TT) received a Trinidad Guardian Writer of the Month award, as well as an EMA 2003 Green Leaf Award for journalism; and Tiphanie Yanique has now published her second book and is an editor with “Calabash” and “Story Quarterly.”

For this year’s Workshop, a maximum of ten participants will be selected from entries only from the Caribbean. The moderators will be novelist Dr Merle Hodge (Crick, Crack Monkey and For the Life of Laetitia) and poet and short story writer Professor Funso Aiyejina, winner of the 2000 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Africa) for The Legend of the Rockhills and Other Stories. They are both lecturers at UWI, St Augustine, in the Faculty of Humanities and Education.

The workshop fee which includes full vegetarian room and board is US$400 and applicants, 20 years and older, who are Caribbean nationals residing in the Caribbean, are invited to submit application forms and samples of their writing (five pages only) no later than December 15 to the following address: Writers Workshop, Department of Creative & Festival Arts, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. For application forms and further information, call Dr Dani Lyndersay (868) 628-4792; Rhoda Bharath (868) 779-7457 or Marissa Brooks (868) 662-2002 ext. 83040 at The University of the West Indies, or email: MarissaUWI@gmail.com.